Shoelaces
by mystic-angel1
Summary: Sora has an unnatural ability to tie his shoes in strange positions. Sora/Riku. Post KH-2.


**Shoelaces**

Sora has this unnatural ability to balance on the arm of a couch with his legs in the air while he ties his shoes. Maybe it came with practice, his body used to balancing precariously on the edges of cliffs or walls or whatever. Sora has always been all about that kind of control, anyway, always good at climbing trees and doing flips and making barrel rolls that land him precisely on his feet. He knows just how to move his body to keep himself upright, no matter what he's trying to do. Riku, if he sat on the edge of the chair like that, with his legs in the air and all, he'd be toppling over and flat on his ass before he could even get his fingers wrapped around his shoelaces. He has a lot more _height_, to be fair. And he's always been more about speed than balance, to be honest, which was why he could beat Sora in a race just by running straight up the beach, while Sora slowed himself down by jumping from tree to tree. And Riku doesn't quite get why Sora doesn't just _sit on the couch _to do it. But all the same, Riku can't help but admire Sora's ability to tie his shoes no matter where he is. Even if he was hanging upside down over a pot of boiling water, his hands tied behind his back, he could probably do it.

Sora finishes the job with a cheerful big bow on his left blue sneaker, and launches himself off the chair, landing in a low crouch. He spots Riku in the living room doorway just as he's straightening his knees, and he grins. He surveys Riku slowly, head to toe, with a slow confidence that Riku still isn't used to, even after so many years. You know someone since he's a kid and it's hard to get used to the changes he presents as an adult, no matter how long it's been since either of you were the same.

"Don't do that," Riku says irritably, shifting the empty cloth shopping bags on to his other shoulder.

Sora laughs, and teases, "Babe, you don't know what you look like!"

Riku knows. Sunglasses half the size of his face. They're in _style_. Hair pulled off his neck in a low ponytail. It's _hot. _He's carrying those dorky reusable grocery bags to do their shopping, but Riku figures that after all the damage that he's done to the whole damn universe, the least he can do is live a green lifestyle on his own damn World.

Yeah, he knows that he looks like a huge dork. He just doesn't care.

"Don't call me babe," he mutters, crossing his arms over his chest.

Sora's smile is warm as he approaches. He's one to talk. They've been home for four years now, long enough to leave all the heavy battle garb behind, to settle for more casual, practical, _normal_ wear. Of course, for people like Riku, _normal_ is jeans and a t-shirt, shorts if they're planning to be outside for long. For Sora, normal is wearing jeans and a t-shirt, except the craziest variety of jeans and t-shirts he can find, rips in the knees and interpretive art-frigging-multicoloured silkscreen vomit or something on the shirt. Today, Sora is wearing his bright yellow t-shirt, as if he needs help lighting up a room. Riku is glad that he is wearing sunglasses. And also that he gave up those yellow pants a long time ago.

"Keep laughing, canary man," Riku retorts, and yeah, it's lame, but Sora is kind of distracting when he's getting all in Riku's personal space and smiling like that, and anyway, Riku kind of gave up on the whole smartass thing a long time ago.

"I thought that if we went grocery shopping in the afternoon, it would make you _less_ grumpy," Sora said, leaning in to kiss the underside of Riku's jaw. "Mm. You smell like sunscreen."

Kisses like that make him less grumpy.

Kisses like that can bring you out of a lot of frightening places.

Like when you're finally home, and after all that time of coming full circle, tearing everything apart and then fighting to put it back together, you find that you're sitting on the same old beach and you still have nothing, only more regrets and a guilt that presses you down like gravity a thousand fold. You watch the two people who mean everything to you start to mean everything to each other, you start to imagine marriage for them, babies, lives and happiness, and you think, what about me, but you know there's no chance. With anyone. It would just never work. And then_ Sora _ is sitting next to you, and he's saying it isn't Kairi, and she doesn't want him either, but what about you and him, so easy, like it just makes sense, and there's nothing holding the two of you back, nothing like the dark history between you.

And Sora is saying, it doesn't matter what happened as long as it doesn't matter to us, as long as we make peace of it, who cares what anyone else thinks, and he's saying he forgives you, had forgiven you a long time ago, and it _is_ easy, how he feels about you, even though it doesn't make sense for it to be. It just is. And you ask when, thinking he doesn't understand, thinking maybe he had wanted you _before, _and you never noticed, and now he wants the you from _before_ and doesn't understand who you are _after_. Just him longing for things to go back to the way they were, willing to ignore what you have done, willing to ignore all of it because the need to go back is so strong.

And he says, at the Door, he just knew. And he hadn't been able to go home until he got you back, that knowledge of what he felt for you driving him on. And you say, Sora, by the time we were closing the Door, how could you even, after everything I'd done. And he says, I understood why you did what you did. It's why I've never been mad. Because you felt trapped, and Kairi was hurt, and you love her, and then you were mad at me because you thought I forgot about you, and you were jealous of the Keyblade, and maybe a little scared of what was going to happen. And anyway, that's _you_, he says, and nobody in the world ever really only wants the good parts of a person.

You don't really think that's true, but you can see in his eyes that he believes that it is. You're protesting a lot, and so Sora says, hesitantly, maybe you just don't want _me._ And you, flabbergasted, tell him you don't entirely know how you couldn't. He laughs, and he says, I'm annoying, and you say, yes, and he says, and I can be really dense a lot, and you say, yes, and he says, I get kind of spoiled about things sometimes, and you say, sometimes, and he says, so that's how not, but you like me anyway, despite those bad things, so you're just proving my point.

And you say, Sora, they're not really the same. And he tells you that is what people say when they lose an argument and don't know what to come back with. And you laugh, and you ask him if he really wants you. And he says yes. And that he thought it would be weird but it isn't, really. And you call him crazy. And then he kisses you, soft lips and a little too much tongue, but it's too good to describe, and when you pull him down against the sand, that's when you know you've really lost the argument. You don't mind so much, really. Maybe that moment there is when you really gave up the smartass thing.

"_You_ should be wearing sunscreen..." Riku says, hand disappearing into Sora's hair, his voice hoarse and dazed from his mind being deep in that memory. Sora, of course, is tanned and has never once had sunburn in his life. Unlike Riku, who has at least one thing in common with Snow White. But that isn't the point. He then says the point. "It's not good for you to go without."

"You know what I like?" Sora says, trailing his kisses down Riku's neck. "I like that our biggest worry these days is whether or not I'm wearing sunscreen."

"I like that, too. But hey, you're—" Riku blinks as Sora tugs the shopping bags off of Riku's shoulder, as he kisses over his Adam's apple and starts to tug Riku's shirt out of his jeans. "Sora, we have to grocery shop."

"We'll have time later," Sora says, grinning as he tugs Riku forward by the front of his belt, leading him back into the living room. And hell no, Sora better not be entertaining ideas of balancing on the couch arm while they do this.

"But lunch?" Riku says, feeling relieved when Sora drops himself down on to the actual couch itself. Spreading himself out, yellow t-shirt tight across his chest, and yeah...yeah, okay. It's a great shirt.

"We have macaroni!" Sora says, grinning, and he reaches up and pulls Riku forcefully down, making space for him between his legs, comfortable and familiar. Then, with a tender slowness completely at odds with the way he'd been manhandling Riku just seconds ago, Sora pulls the sunglasses off his face.

Riku presses his elbows into the cushions on either side of Sora's head, framing him in and kissing him long and slow. Because yes, Riku loves this ripped-jean wearing, freak shoe-tying, annoying, dense, spoiled kid. All the bad things and the good. And he will eat plain macaroni for lunch, even for just one second of this. Maybe that makes him a huge-ass sunglasses wearing, environmentalist, cranky, ex-evil doing nerd. But Riku's okay with that.

It's only when Sora wraps his legs around Riku, and his sneaker digs painfully into Riku's ass, that he remembers. "You still have your shoes on," he murmures, grinning, against Sora's cheek.

"Yeah, one sec," Sora says, and bends his leg all the way back to his face so he can untie one shoe at a time.

The skill. Riku really does admire it.


End file.
